Actually they were pegged as the next team eliminated and some thought this would be the leg they were eliminated but with the CBS press release and the blurb for the following leg it led us to believe this leg as not a elimination leg.

A Farmer's golf hole averages 200 meters (220 yards). A golf ball can be hit that far in one stroke, but the croquet-like mallet cannot hit a large ball that far. With males swinging the mallet, I think they can maybe get 100 meters if their shot is accurate. With 2 females on a team, I don't know what their typical distance for a well-hit shot is, but I am going to guess between 25 and 50 yards. That could take 8 perfectly hit shots for them to reach the hole area. Since many shots are not perfectly hit, you can see why Maria/Tiffany were never able to get close in at least 16 separate attempts at just hole #1.

Poker players Maria Ho, 26, and Tiffany Michelle, 25, ran out of luck on Sunday's Amazing Race when they were forced to withdraw after failing to summon enough strength for either Detour. After bailing on a carnival test-your-strength bell-ringing device, they headed to the golf field before switching back, and then switching back again to golf — before calling it a day. "We are tough girls and like to win, but at that point, we realized we had nothing more that we could physically give," Tiffany tells TVGuide.com. How much time did they spend attempting both tasks? Find out below — and whether they really thought gay brothers Sam and Dan were straight.

TVGuide.com: How long were you guys trying to do both Detours — twice — before deciding to quit?Tiffany: It was over three hours. Toward the end, it was so hard because we had no idea where the other teams were. We had only seen Meghan and Cheyne leaving and Matt and Gary on the golf field, but we had a good feeling that nobody else was taking three hours to do either of the challenges. It felt like days, but in reality it was three hours that we put our hearts and souls out there on that field.

TVGuide.com: At what point did you decide to quit?Tiffany: Technically, we didn't want to quit. ... If you can't complete a Detour, it's a 24-hour penalty. We weren't sitting there saying, "We're done!" We were saying, "We'll take the penalty because we can't finish this," but we knew there was no way to come back from that. Quitting was not what was in our heads. ... We were at the point where we had tried so hard on both sides that we just couldn't do it. That mallet at the carnival bell was over 40 pounds and if you [multiply] that by 70 attempts, our bodies were physically weak. When we got to the golfing challenge, the winds had picked up so terribly. Maria: The ball would come back toward us because the wind was so bad [at the golf field]. That's another thing — they can't predict weather elements when they test a challenge. Sometimes it comes down to Mother Nature!

TVGuide.com: Some viewers think the leg was poorly designed since both Detours were physical. Did you think it was unfair? And why was the bell outside? Why couldn't you just dance?Maria: We don't know [why the bell was there.] But no other female still in the race attempted the carnival bell. Also, they didn't show this, but it took a couple tries for all the males that did it. Normally, [there's one physical Detour] and the other is a little less physically demanding and usually involves something more mental or something more gender-neutral. The dance was supposed to be the gender-neutral one, but adding that element of the carnival bell made it a very physical task. Even though there's a certain technique to hitting those bells, it still requires a certain amount of physical strength. I can attest to Tiffany being one of the two strongest females in the whole race and she came close, but for her to not be able to do that goes to show that it might've been something that was impossible for most women.

TVGuide.com: Do you think you would've made it if you stuck with one and didn't change tasks?Maria: We feel like if maybe we had stayed at the carnival bell a little bit longer the first time instead of going to the golf thing, we might've been able to do it. When Tiffany was getting close to ringing the bell, that was actually on our second try back. So it leads us to believe that we would've gotten it eventually if we stayed. We like to think that because we don't like to think something's impossible. But at the end of the day, we were just happy to have gotten that far with each other.

TVGuide.com: I thought it was ironic Sam helped you with the bell count at the Roadblock by telling you the number, but you were done in by a bell in the end.Tiffany: [Laughs] We didn't think of that, but that's true! I actually had 61 as my first count. I had gone up and down a couple times. When he said 62, I was like, "Wait a second." We were getting deep into the race and so at some point you have to start cutting each other off, so I had this weird feeling he wasn't telling me the truth and my number was close enough, so my first attempt, I went with 61. When I had to start again, I went with 62 and he wasn't lying!

TVGuide.com: You had a good alliance going there. But why did they wait for you to get a new car in Dubai? There was nothing they could do.Tiffany: They told us later it was because we had a map and they didn't! Every time you see something, there's always something else going on behind the scenes. We know from poker you have to be nice to everyone. You don't want to stand out and have someone hate you, but sometimes there are things you do on the race that have ulterior motives even though they look nice at the time. Maria: I think a lot of people have been discounting how beneficial having an alliance is on the race versus Survivor or something. But what they're forgetting is, in The Amazing Race, you just have to avoid being last. Whenever you're in a situation where you can make sure to keep close in distance to someone else and you guys are helping each other out, four heads are better than two. There was a reason why we both made it this far.

TVGuide.com: Did you honestly not know they were gay?Tiffany: [Laughs] This is a funny thing. We've seen seasons past, so we had a feeling they were the hot, token gay guys, just looking around, seeing the other teams. They tried to downplay it, like we tried to downplay that we were poker players. They talked to some of their ex-girlfriends because they have dated women before. ... We really fell in love with who they were, but it's not like we were planning on having their children! You could hear the lovefest [in our confessionals], so people thought we didn't know they were gay, but it was a very platonic love. They actually told us they were gay in Vietnam before they told all the other teams [in the airport on Sunday's episode]. They came out to us early on, so we knew our initial instincts were correct.

TVGuide.com: Did you honestly not know they were gay?Tiffany: [Laughs] This is a funny thing. We've seen seasons past, so we had a feeling they were the hot, token gay guys, just looking around, seeing the other teams. They tried to downplay it, like we tried to downplay that we were poker players. They talked to some of their ex-girlfriends because they have dated women before. ... We really fell in love with who they were, but it's not like we were planning on having their children! You could hear the lovefest [in our confessionals], so people thought we didn't know they were gay, but it was a very platonic love. They actually told us they were gay in Vietnam before they told all the other teams [in the airport on Sunday's episode]. They came out to us early on, so we knew our initial instincts were correct

Does anyone here know if it was in the rules that they had to ring the bell by swinging the mallet onto the target?

If it just said that they had to ring the bell, then they could have tried a few different things.

I didn't think of it at first, but from looking at the bell-ringing device, they could have tried stomping on or jumping on the target with their entire body weight. I don't know if it would have even worked, especially because of their wooden shoes, but I would have liked to have seen them try it if it wasn't against the rules.

They looked beautiful!! Glad they got a chance to explain the "lie", as that seems to have raised the most questions from their teammmates and the Internet community.

I am going to miss them!! Would have loved to see how they would have tackled the rest of the race.

Valiant effort!!

Logged

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Maria: We don't know [why the bell was there.] But no other female still in the race attempted the carnival bell. Also, they didn't show this, but it took a couple tries for all the males that did it. Normally, [there's one physical Detour] and the other is a little less physically demanding and usually involves something more mental or something more gender-neutral.

Amazing Race’s Poker Players Call Final Task ‘Unfair’November 3, 2009After surviving wasabi bombs, a nasty fall in a dirty river and a car accident, the lucky streak ended for professional poker players Maria Ho, 26, and Tiffany Michelle, 25, in Holland. Over the phone, the only all-female team in the competition defended their decision to quit during the detour in Holland. –Carrie Bell

It must hurt to be yet another all-female team knocked out due to a lack of strength.Maria: We didn’t come into this thinking we would be the physically strongest team, but we also didn’t think we would be faced with something that we just couldn’t do because we lacked brute strength. We were forced to throw our hands up in defeat. It was a very hard situation … We would have been able to get the dance and we would have eaten the herring, but that carnival bell dinger added an element that was physically unfair … It was heartbreaking.

And the golf game really wasn’t any easier?Maria: It was not regular golf. And you have to add in the other elements like weather and the fact that we were freezing from swimming. There were literally 30-mile-an-hour winds blowing in the opposite direction of where we had to hit the ball. I don’t want to make excuses but we gave everything we had and we still couldn’t complete either one.

You both make a successful living in a stressful high-stakes, male-dominated field. It must have taken a lot to make you feel quitting was the only option.Tiffany: TV doesn’t do justice to real-life situations. It was so much worse than it looked. That mallet was over 40 pounds. Just lifting it over your head was a task. We were exhausted from going back and forth. We were uncomfortable in wet long johns. I’m a push-through, do-anything girl, but I hit a wall and needed to hug it out.

You went into the Race fairly confident. Was it harder than you imagined it’d be?Maria: It’s a hundred times harder physically and mentally than you expected and we realized that within the first hour of landing in Japan. For any competition, you have to put on an air of confidence and capability. After that first wasabi bomb, I was like, “What did we get ourselves into?”Tiffany: Luck plays a huge part. Take the Dubai snowman thing. Erica showed up last and wasn’t really digging that hard but she found one first. We can’t knock it because we got lucky several times. Luck is also what makes it fun to watch. Without it, you’d know the winner on day one.

You were knocked by viewers for lying about your occupations. Why’d you use that strategy? And do you regret it?Tiffany: After seeing [Survivor contestants] Rob and Amber deal with so much animosity for being TV personalities who had won a million dollars already, we thought the best strategy would be to highlight something else in our lives as our careers. I’m very involved with the Los Angeles Youth Network, which helps homeless youth, so it wasn’t a lie. You need allies and we thought it’d endear people to us.

How have you coped with being one of the season’s most hated duos?Tiffany: We were a little more prepared for that than Lance because we have a public image. We have dealt with trash talkers before. We already learned not to pay attention or let those negative words in our brains. Anyone who knows us knows we’re good people.

How did the Race change you?Maria: Rarely in life do you get the opportunity to push yourself to the limit and see what you’re capable of when you put your mind to it. It strengthened [our] relationship. We wanted to spend more time together after. We didn’t want a break. We made bonds that will last a lifetime. The million-dollar prize pales in comparison to what we take away from participating.

Certainly most people cannot claim they crashed a car in the parking lot of the Dubai desert. Maria: That was my favorite part. Another racer made me a keychain that says, “Warning: Asian female driver,” and it’ll be my keychain from here on out.

In the Netherlands, professional poker players Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho were eliminated from the CBS reality series “Amazing Race” when the duo was unable to complete either side of the leg’s Detour. The last women standing in the 2007 and 2008 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Events sat down with Poker News Daily to recap their journey.

Poker News Daily: Congratulations on finishing sixth in the 15th cycle of “Amazing Race.” The show was filmed during the WSOP Main Event. How do you feel now after watching it unfold on television?

Ho: It definitely took some time after the fact to cope with, but watching it on television was hard for both of us. We’re living it and feeling those emotions all over again.

Michelle: We made it so much further than we thought we would. At any point, we were willing to accept our fate.

PND: Several in the poker community have labeled the Netherlands’ Detour as sexist due to the presence of a high striker and whipping winds at the golf course. Do you agree?

Ho: From a production standpoint, it’s so hard for them to come up with all of these tasks. We’re not going to call it unfair. All we knew is that we gave it everything we had, but what we had wasn’t enough to complete it. In golf, the elements were too much to overcome. For us to try the high striker 70+ times, it obviously wasn’t the easiest thing to do. It might have come off like we didn’t give it our best shot, but we did.

Michelle: We spent three hours giving each side of the Detour a decent shot. If you can’t finish a Detour, you got a penalty of 24 hours. At one point, EMTs had come out and assess that we weren’t getting hypothermia. Either way, we knew it would be tough to come back from that.

PND: What was the most memorable part of the race?

Ho: Every moment was memorable. We got to go to so many good places and do things that we would never be able to do under normal circumstances. It was memorable when we got a four-hour penalty after losing two tourists and also had a speed bump to overcome. I feel like people were going to count us out and we wanted to show that we could compete, so we gave that next leg of the race our all. It was so great to come in the middle of the pack on that leg.

Michelle: Any time I was able to do a challenge that the guys were doing, like in the Dubai desert, it was incredibly rewarding.PND: Was it tough seeing that two Harlem Globetrotters were among your competition?

Ho: We definitely tried to size them up a bit based on what we saw. Once we got to know who they were, they didn’t physically intimidate us. It’s not always about being the strongest or the fastest.

Michelle: We started calling them the “Lakers” because they looked like basketball players. We knew that they were going to have a lot of strength physically, but we could use our intelligence and creativity to counteract that.

PND: Do you feel that you represented the poker community well?

Michelle: All that we can represent is ourselves. It’s a big burden to take the poker community on our shoulders. A lot of poker didn’t come into play and this is a very physically intense game. All that we can hope is that our friends thought well of it. All we could do is represent Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle the best we could.PND: Are you changed after this experience?Ho: The “Amazing Race” was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s life-changing in the sense that you get to push your limits physically, emotionally, and mentally. This race gave us both the opportunity to do that. Given any situation we encounter, we know what’s inside of us and what we’re capable of. In addition, the bond between Tiffany and I will last a lifetime. We were close friends leading up to this race and there’s nothing like having a person to lean on.

PND: The finish line of this installment of “Amazing Race” is in Las Vegas. How disappointed were you to hear that given you’re both professional poker players? Also, who’s your pick to win?

Ho: You have some strong teams left. Sam and Dan are tough boys. Meghan and Cheyne won a lot of legs. The Globetrotters have been in it to win it. Matt and Gary have sneaked by. Any of the last five teams are going to be tough competition. We got so close with those top teams. We’re excited to see how it ends.